


Love Me If You Dare - Are You Game?

by sunset_oasis



Series: Innocent Before Yesterday [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blaise's POV, First Person's POV, M/M, based on the French-Belgian movie Love Me If You Dare (Jeux d'enfants)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 16:17:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9131974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunset_oasis/pseuds/sunset_oasis
Summary: After Blaise first met Draco at the Malfoy's annual Christmas Ball at age nine, they started a series of dares that were played throughout their entire life.  Story from Blaise's POV. Oneshot.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Harry Potter.  
> Plot loosely based on the movie Love Me If You Dare (Jeux d'enfants).

We all loved games as children.  Wizard’s Chess, for one.  Directing the pieces on the board to march forward gave us the first taste of being in control.  Gobstones where we showed off our collection of marbles.  Exploding Snap, because everyone seemed to love card games for some unfathomable reason.  And Quidditch – for the sportier ones of us.

But there was one game you must never play.  Even if your best friend suggested it.  Never ever.  It’s a game in which you would probably end up being killed by the flashing green lights that the aurors were firing all around.

This game started in a magnificent manor.  A typical pureblood social party.  A pretty boy, with shiny blond hair, pale skin, and stormy grey eyes that lured me in deep. And when I finally realized how deep in I was, there was already no way out.

 

* * *

 

It started with my first visit to the Malfoy Manor.  I was nine at that time, and Mother and I had moved from Italy to England after the death of my third stepfather.  Always the one for parties, especially the ones held by one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, Mother brought me to the Malfoys’ annual Christmas Ball.

And that was when I met _him_ for the first time.

We were all just children, but he already knew how to hold himself with elegance and confidence just like a typical British gentlewizard.  He had a certain posh and preciosity that I had mostly only seen in British upper class purebloods and rarer with the ardent, passionate Italians.  Frankly, I wasn’t really fond of the preciosity of the British, but I found this boy’s elegance to be quite … eye-attracting and I was really intrigued.

“Welcome to the Malfoy Manor, I’m Draco Malfoy,” the boy introduced himself and held out his hand.

The pureblood manner training from what Mother had taught me kicked in and I replied, “Blaise Zabini, pleasure to meet you,” and shook his hand.

We exchanged a few polite greetings before he introduced me to a few of his friends.  Vincent and Gregory were from the vassal families of the Malfoys.  The chattering girl was called Pansy, they’d been friends since they were in diapers.  Theo, “the most bookish of us all” according to Draco’s words.

I thanked him for his introductions and left to fetch some food.  After some time, I found myself a little bored with the party since I already tried all the tasty looking foods. Mother was still busy seducing men and adults were all chatting about politics or gossips in small circles.  My eyes landed on Draco, who was frowning slightly as he surveyed the whole room, and our eyes met for a moment and we instantly figured out each other’s boredom.

He grinned at me – a boyish grin that was quite cute, not the all-too-formal, polite smile he had at the beginning – and walked over to me. “Feeling a little bored, too?”

I grinned back and admitted, “A little.”

His eyes twinkled mischievously and he pointed towards a particular woman in the room, “See that woman with brown hair?”  At my nod, Draco continued, “That’s Mrs. Greengrass.”  He lowered his voice into a conspiratory whisper, “Never liked her, always trying to suck up to my parents and wanting to arrange a marriage contract with me and her younger daughter.” 

It was refreshing and nice to see the mischievous streak under his perfect polite British upperclass pureblood manners. It was quite cute, in some way.  I found myself liking this boy.  His complaint about that Mrs. Greengrass sucking up to his parents was amusing though – I suspected that with the Malfoys being one of the most influential families in Wizarding Britain, a _lot_ of people would be trying to suck up to his parents.

“I dare you to spill champagne on that _tedious_ yellow dress of hers,” Draco continued in his conspiratory whisper, his eyes shining bright with eagerness, “Are you game?”

I knew this was a test of some sort, and if I passed – if I agreed – I’d be included to his circle of close friends.  And, in my opinion, that yellow dress did look quite tedious.  A slow smirk spread across my face and I said, “Game.”

 _That_ was how it all started.

 

* * *

 

We laughed together so hard when I managed to spill champagne all over that tedious dress, and I found his laughter to be a really nice sound.  Though I quickly had to face a shrieking Mrs. Greengrass and a stern telling off from my very furious mother.  But it was worth it.  And later I heard Mrs. Malfoy telling to Mrs. Parkinson, “You know, I never liked that dress.  At least the boy has tastes.”

From then on, we started a series of dares in our lives.  In the pre-Hogwarts days, we challenged each other to do things the parents frown upon at the boring pureblood social functions and had a laugh afterwards. 

“Draco,” I leant close to him and pointed to the man his mother was talking to, “I dare you to go up to that man your mother’s chatting with, and tell him he’s stupid Hufflepuff.”  We all heard from our parents how the Hufflepuff House was for losers. “Are you game?”

Draco raised his chin confidently and said, “Game!”

His mother later scolded him that, “You know there are some things we don’t say directly to other people’s faces, even if they were true.”  While his father looked stern as well, Draco told me later that his father seemed to share his assessment of that man.

 

* * *

 

A few years later, we started Hogwarts.  Our game of dares continued.

At my dare, he told a pretty Ravenclaw girl that she was fat and ugly. At Draco’s dare, I told Professor Sprout that Herbology was a useless subject and gotten detention.  I raised an eyebrow and smirked at Draco when the professor turned away, and he smirked right back. 

“Draco,” one day just before Potions class, I looked at him challengingly and said, “I dare you to tell Professor Snape during class that what he’s teaching is a bunch of rubbish and ask him to do a harder curriculum.  Are you game?”

I could see the hesitance in his eyes, and I understood why.  While his parents spoilt him and he never feared their scolding, his godfather was a different matter for him.  Professor Snape had the aura that made people cowed and he looked extremely stern and strict.  Though of course we all knew how he favored the Slytherins, we didn’t know how he’d react if someone did that in class.

After some internal struggle, Draco finally said, with determination, “Game.”

Then he’d been told to stay after class, and I waited outside of it for him to come out after the class ended.  He said he had to resolve to telling his sharp and all-too-knowing Godfather that we were playing the game of dares, and that Professor Snape had scrutinized him for a long moment before saying, “Don’t take it too far,” and gave him a detention.

It had only grown crazier through the years. 

I dared him to walk naked in the common room. (It excited a bunch of our female housemates.) 

He dared me to steal Pansy’s beloved green dress and hide it away. (She threw a fit when she couldn’t find it.) 

I dared him to go ride the Hippogriff like Potter. (I visited him at the Hospital Wing for a week after that.) 

He dared me to charm the chairs at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall and made it sticky. (He waited patiently for me to get back every night after my detention from McGonagall for two weeks.) 

I dared him to shout that he loved Harry Potter in the middle of the Great Hall. (Potter got angry and red-faced and yelled at him to ‘sod off’.) 

He dared me to ask Fleur Delacour to kiss me and ask her to the Yule Ball in front of a crowd.  (She agreed to neither.)

It became our special bond with each other, and we grew closer and closer to each other throughout the years.   It lost points for Slytherins and landed us in various detentions and we both knew it was stupid and crazy, but it was _our_ game.  We treasured our time together and we enjoyed each other’s company to the utmost, nothing could stop us.  I never figured out exactly when I fell for him during all these time, but I knew I did.  I had fallen for Draco, and fallen hard.

 

* * *

 

Then came the sixth year when things took a dramatic turn for Draco.  I could tell that he was stressed by the assignment from You-Know-Who, and his eyes began losing their innocence and energetic fire they had once contained.  I missed the old him when we had played a bunch of crazy and stupid dares but I also understood that we weren’t exactly children anymore.  We would be graduating within two years and we now had more responsibilities on us than before.

That never stopped me from reminiscing the younger, crazier years of course.  Never stopped me from missing the old Draco.

During Christmas time, I dared him to go ice-skating on the Great Lake with me, because I just wanted to distract him from his worries.  It pained me to look at him being under so much stress these days.

He hesitated for a moment.  We hadn’t played this game for a while now, not since his father got sent to Azkaban and You-Know-Who gave him the task.  But perhaps desperate for some change to his usual, stressful time in the Room of Requirements, he said, “Game.”

So we went.

That night seemed like returning to the previous few years.  I saw his face lit-up with a genuine smile, unlike the dark sneers he used to wear these days.  He looked beautiful under the moonlight.  We danced in a crazy speed on the lake that night, forgetting everyone else, everything else.  It was just the two of us.  Just like the old days.

Bathing in the cold breezes of Christmas, we whirled around again and again, going faster and faster until we both landed on the ice, laughing so hard.  After the laughter died down slowly, I examined his flushed face and pale lips that looked so tasty in front of me, and saw the lips opened and he said, still gasping for breath, “Kiss me?”

So I did.  Pressing my lips against his, we kissed each other with a sense of desperateness and neediness, savoring in each other’s taste.  I pinned him tightly down on the frozen lake and held him closely and invade my tongue into his mouth while he kissed back fiercely.  Oh god, how I just love him.  So much.

After a while, we were both panting so we broke apart slightly, gasping for breath.  I wanted to make him mine, I loved him and I wanted him so much.  In desperation to show him my eagerness I replied “game” despite that he hadn’t asked if I were game or not and leant forward for a second round of kissing.

That was, apparently, a mistake.

He pushed me off abruptly and his voice turned dead cold, “Was it all just a game to you?”

I fell back, shocked, not understanding what the hell just happened for a moment.  I wanted him and he wanted me and we were in the middle of some wonderful snogging and … what the hell?

It was only later, so much later that it was already too late, that I understood how he felt like being tricked and how painful it was for him for him to mistakenly believe that it was just a game for me.   But we often understood things like that too late.

At young, stupid sixteen, I was hurt by his refusal and didn’t understand why he’d think it was just a game for me when we apparently wanted each other. 

“Stay away from me from now on,” he snarled and stormed back to the castle.  I stayed, hurt and confused and angry.  We didn’t speak to each other again for a long time.

 

* * *

 

The war broke loose in our seventh year, dragging onto the first and two years after we left Hogwarts.  He joined the Death Eaters while I joined the Order of the Phoenix just to be different from him.  We didn’t cross path much after Hogwarts.

Until a battle at Hogsmeade in early 1999 where we saw each other again.  We ran into each other just in front of the half-blasted Honeydukes shop.  His once innocent and bright eyes looked haunted and tired, his once confident appearance looked weary.  It took me a moment before reminding myself that he was now the enemy.  He was on the other side of the war.

But he was bleeding and limping and his wand was three feet away from where he lied on the ground. And despite knowing he was on the other side of the war, I couldn’t bring myself to raise my wand against him, to either kill him or hurt him or bind him and let the Order send him to Azkaban.  I just couldn’t.

He sneered at me, “You’d never dare hurt me, Blaise.”

Before I could think of a reply, a Death Eater came running towards us with his wand risen high, and it took me only a split of second to decide to apparate away.

 

* * *

 

The war finally ended in the third year after our graduation from Hogwarts.  Rumor was that Harry Potter and You-Know-Who had a face down in the Malfoy Manor, and You-Know-Who tried killing him but was unsuccessful and Narcissa Malfoy somehow lied to You-Know-Who about Potter’s death, and in the end Potter sprang up again, alive, and killing You-Know-Who.

Potter testified for Narcissa and Draco at trials as thanks, and that kept them out of the Azkaban.

We didn’t meet each other again for a long time, but I saw his photo in The Prophet after the day of his trial.  He looked like a man who’d been through many, many awful things.  But I could still see a faint trace of the once innocent young boy beneath the haunted, tired figure.  Even if it was very, very faint.

And I missed him.  Still missed him even after all these years.  I wondered what I could do to make him come back to me again.

Then I remembered what he’d last said to me, “you’d never dare hurt me, Blaise.”

 _Huh, never dare hurt you?  We’ll see about that,_ I thought, and a plan formed inside my head.

 

* * *

 

Daphne and I started dating a while after.  Though every time I looked at her, I was reminded of the time when Draco first dared me to spill champagne onto her mother’s tedious looking yellow dress.  I was good at being charming when I wanted to, and our relationship developed quickly. Then I went to buy a beautiful emerald serpentine ring that I always kept on me.

I still hadn’t forgotten Draco.  I didn’t think that I had stopped loving him either.  The love was mixed with hurt, with bitterness, with anger, but the love was still there.  Always there. 

 

* * *

 

Post-war Ministry regime was pretty rotten, with the heroes over-abusing their newly-gained status and power.  Complaints were rising, and some Dark Arts activities were springing up again, though none of them as organized as the last Dark Lord.  But some were more brutal, despite being less organized.  The aurors were forced to apply the killing curse sometimes because trying to simply capture them was too impractical with the resistance using the Dark Arts.

I heard that Vincent died in one of the events like this.  His family’s assets were all transferred to the Gringotts Accounts of the post war heroes.  He couldn’t find a job anywhere either, with his background.  He joined some Dark Arts activities and in one of their raids, they got killed by the aurors.

I started growing worried about Draco after the news of Vincent, but I didn’t hear anything about him from a long time.  Another few years had passed before I accidentally ran into him in Diagon Alley one day.  We hadn’t seen each other in such a long time, but he brought back so many memories and emotions whirling inside of me.  I politely invited him for tea in a nearby restaurant, and he politely agreed.

Just like how polite we’d been when we had first met.

I took out the emerald serpentine ring I always had by my side and laid it down on the table.  Then I calmly met his eyes as I opened the box, revealing the shiny ring inside.

“Thinking about getting married?” He sneered. “You’ve got a lover?”  It was a typical Malfoy sneer, but I could see that there were emotions hidden beneath it that he tried very hard to bury.   It reminded me of the sneer he had used to put on during our sixth year.

“Yes,” I put on a sweet, dreamy smile. “There was this person I’ve been in loved with for so many years, yet I kept silent about it.  This person, who was my first friend when I came to Britain when I was nine, who had so many adventures with me at Hogwarts, who played pranks with me on the other houses and on the professors, who had long, late-night chats at me in the Slytherin Boys’ Dormitory.  Who, at one point, I thought I might hate, but then I realized that I could never hate this person because this person had become a part of my life that I couldn’t live without with.”  I looked straight into his eyes and said softly, “I want to get married, my dearest Draco, my lover.  Do you agree to it?”

I could see the light and hope that shone through his eyes that became brighter and brighter after each word I said, and I seemed to see the once innocent and young boy again.  I could hear how tight and emotional his voice was as he said, “Yes.  Of course.”

“Thank you,” a slow, half-cruel smirk spread across my face, “I’m getting married to Daphne, glad to gain your approval.  Dare to come to my wedding, Draco dearest?”

I looked into his shocked eyes that dawned with realization and filled with hurt, and my lips twitched in amusement, “you said that I’d never dare hurt you … well … you were wrong.”

 

* * *

 

The wedding of Daphne and me was grand, just like a proper, high-society pureblood wedding.  The kind that Daphne’s mother – the one that Draco had called a suck up when we had first met – would like.  I let them plan the wedding details, not interested in getting involved at all.  Truth was, I was never interested in much aside from Draco.

Things were going smoothly until Draco turned up at the part just before Daphne and I were about to exchange vows.  “Do you, Blaise Zabini, agree to take—” the priest’s word was cut short by Draco who walked into the wedding, his chin raised high and his eyes determined, not caring that he was about to ruin someone’s wedding.

“Do you dare to walk away at your own wedding, Blaise?” Draco, my best friend, my love of life, called out to me. “Never mind the wedding, leave with me.  It’s always been our game, everything else – everyone else – is irrelevant.”  As his eyes stared straight into mine, I felt a sense of aliveness that had been amiss in my life during the years apart from him.  Damn, how I missed him.

I had known that the only way to make him come back into my life was to hurt him so badly that he’d want to come back for revenge.  And now that he was back, he was here, and he still looked as beautiful as he had been years ago in my eyes.

“So, are you game?” He called out challengingly.

There was only one answer for that. “Game.”

I strode towards him, leaving the shocked Daphne and her fainting parents behind.  The crowd was gobsmacked.  Rita Skeeter looked thrilled as if Christmas had come early and her photographer kept clicking his camera frantically.

I finally reached Draco’s side and flashed a smile at him as I grabbed his hand, “Let’s go then, love.”

And we left.

 

* * *

 

On our way out, he told me with a wicked grin that he was actually involved in some of the recent Dark Arts activities and was being tracked down by a few aurors.  “Potter testified for me and Mother, yes, but the Ministry still took away a lot of our money.  And the society still looked down on me and I couldn’t get hired anywhere.  I hate the bloody Ministry and their post-war regime.  I’m making the voice of the ex-Slytherins heard by the public, using some dramatic methods, perhaps.”

“Always known you were prone to the dramatics, darling,” I smirked and pressed my lips against his quickly before he could respond.  I had been wanting to do this for so long, and now I was finally tasting him again.

He was still as fucking delicious as he’d been at sixteen.  Some things never changed.

“I’m considered a pretty dangerous criminal,” he told me after we slowly broke the kiss, gasping for breaths. “They might just give me a quick Avada when they found me, the aurors.  Most of them never liked me and thought I should’ve gone to Azkaban directly after the war even after Potter testified for me, so they’d love to kill me.”

“Well, good job on staying alive then,” I raised an eyebrow. “If they’re that eager, it’s pretty amazing you’re not dead yet.”

“They’ve never been able to catch me,” he said with a hint of pride, “and I’ve been hiding a lot recently … though I did make an exception to snatch the groom away at your wedding.” He smirked before looking at me coolly, “I suspected that the Prophet was now running this piece of news and the aurors had been notified.  They might actually catch me this time.  Do you regret coming with me?”

“Regret?” I scoffed, “Never.”  And I pressed him against the wall of some building not far away from the wedding venue and kissed him.

The aurors appeared not long after, I had to appreciate their efficiency.  Apparently they really wanted to get Draco, considering just how many aurors had been sent.  They were running towards us with their wands raised, the killing curse on their lips and ready to roll off anytime.

“Then I dare you to stay here with me and wait until some _Avada_ kill us both,” he smirked, tracing my face with long, pale hands. “Are you game?”

“Game,” I smirked back, and took out the emerald serpentine ring that I had always kept with me and slid it through his fingers. (I had given Daphne something else.  Something plain, something typical, something that would never rival the beauty of this ring that I reserved only for Draco.)

“This is for you,” I told him, “I’m not letting you go again next lifetime.”

He kissed me passionately, and I kissed back with equal fierceness.  We didn’t bother hiding away from the surrounding aurors that were too eager to fire their killing curses.  We didn’t bother to shift away as many flashes of blinding green light sped towards us.

“There were a lot of things that I was game for but you never asked,” I whispered into his ear, just before a moment before an _Avada Kedavra_ struck us, “Eating flobberworms … insulting high-rank Death Eaters … loving you like crazy.”


End file.
